The English patient

Question: Princess Diana, John Lennon, Bobby Sands - what do they have in common? Answer: they all have memorials in Havana. It is a very odd country, Cuba. It is largely defined by its hatred of the United States, which is what keeps its revolution alive after more than 40 years of dubious achievement. But Cubans also seem rather fond of the US. Certainly they like its dollars, and its tourists, despite the anti-American propaganda with which they have been bombarded for the past half-century.

The Hotel Nacional, in which I was staying, proudly boasts that its guests have included Winston Churchill, Lucky Luciano, the "Duques" of Windsor, George Raft, Walt Disney, Frank Sinatra, Naomi Campbell, and dozens of American film stars not usually associated with the socialist struggle. But if US tourists are cheered by this, they would be dismayed by the museums of the Revolution and of the Interior Ministry, both of which are devoted in large part to the "terrorism" of the US.

America's alleged acts of terrorism are impressively imaginative - from concealing explosives in shampoo bottles to infecting Cuban pigs with swine fever, from trying to kill Fidel Castro with exploding cigars to threatening the Cuban sugar crop with a deadly virus. If Cuba were to launch a war on terrorism, America would be its main target.

I failed to see the monument to Bobby Sands and the other Maze prison hunger strikers because I didn't know where it was. Gerry Adams controversially attended its inauguration last December, but this is too recent for it to be in any guide book. But I did visit both the "Parque John Lennon" and the "Jardín Diana de Gales" thanks to an excellent new book about Havana by Claudia Lightfoot. Ms Lightfoot clearly knows a great deal about Cuba, but even she is bewildered by "the connection between a proudly socialist state and the most glamorous, media-hyped member of the British royal family". Princess Diana never visited Cuba, nor had any recorded interest in the place. But the habaneros nevertheless commissioned two weird phallic sculptures to commemorate her in a specially dedicated garden in the heart of Old Havana.

The Parque John Lennon is, according to Ms Lightfoot, "a less anomalous find in Havana than the Jardín de Diana" because the Cubans have long suffered from Beatlemania. There was, however, "general astonishment" when, in December 2000, Castro himself unveiled the life-size bronze statue of Lennon sitting on a park bench. People were astonished because the Beatles were effectively banned from Cuba in the 1960s and were never heard on Cuban radio until after they had disbanded. It is not clear why Castro belatedly decided to become a fan.

Carved into stone at John Lennon's feet are words in Spanish from his song, Imagine: "Diras que soy un soñador, pero non soy el unico". It is fortunate that these words are in Spanish because the Cubans show a magnificent lack of regard for the English language. Practically nothing written in English on the island makes any sense at all. Even an extract from Castro's most famous speech - a passionate revolutionary manifesto he pronounced in his own defence at his trial for rebellion in 1953 - is displayed as follows in the Museum of the Revolution: "We can call people, if it is a matter of fight, to the 600,000 of Cubans whom are unemployed; to the 500,000 of workers whom live in despicable hut. That's the people, the one that suffers all the unfortunes, and therefore, they are able to fight braverly!"

Even in the Hotel Nacional, built by the Americans for the Americans when Cuba was effectively a US colony, all traces of proficiency in English have been expunged. In my room, the minibar's "Consuming Form Daily Service" asked hotel guests to "fill out and sing this form" and to "hand in your last record consumptions to the cashier".

I was enchanted by Havana, but left thoroughly confused. How can a country that has enjoyed long intimacy with America be unable to produce one normal sentence in English? How can a country full of gifted and sensitive musicians put on the most vulgar and musically repellent cabarets imaginable for the entertainment of its tourists? I think that Cuba is one country to which the phrase "land of contrasts" is wholly appropriate.